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1. What happened to the Equal Rights Amendment ?
A) It became the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the Constitution.
B) It was proposed in Congress, but it never gained enough support to be presented
to the states for ratification.
C) It was passed by Congress but failed to receive support from the necessary threefourths of the states.
D) It remains before the states to ratify.
E) It was approved by two-thirds of the states but not by three-fourths of the
Congress.
2. What happened to Richard Nixon after he resigned from the presidency?
A) He was convicted of obstruction of justice but received a suspended sentence.
B) He ran for the Republican nomination for governor of California but was defeated
by Ronald Reagan.
C) He was pardoned by President Ford for any and all crimes committed while in
office.
D) He became American ambassador to China during the Ford administration.
E) He taught politics and government at Harvard University.
3. How did President Ford try to curb inflation?
A) Voluntary wage-and-price restraint
B) Increases in federal spending
C) Support for lowering the discount rate
D) All of these
E) None of these
4. Which of the following did not contribute to Jimmy Carter's election victory in 1976?
A) He clearly defined his economic and social programs.
B) He emphasized his status as an outsider to Washington politics.
C) He rejected the concept of the imperial presidency.
D) He pledged never to lie to the American people.
E) He professed his faith as a born-again Christian.
5. Which of the following was one of President Carter's high priorities in international
affairs?
A) Reasserting American rights in the Panama Canal Zone
B) Increasing attention to human-rights violations
C) Isolating China from other nations
D) Ensuring open markets and free trade around the globe
E) None of these
6. Which of the following correctly summarizes the Carter administration's policy toward
the area of the world with which it is paired?
A) Panama: fortification of the canal and the Canal Zone against the threats of the
Panamanian dictator
B) Soviet Union: growing détente and continued expansion of economic and cultural
relations
C) China: restoration of full diplomatic relations
D) Europe: reduction of stores of chemical weapons
E) Middle East: use of American troops to stop the Egyptian invasion of Israel
7. During the Carter presidency, what characterized the American economy?
A) The worst depression since the 1930s
B) Rapid business expansion
C) Record low unemployment
D) Creeping inflation brought about by steady business growth
E) Business stagnation and skyrocketing inflation
8. What did Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Stephen Wozniak, and Steven Jobs introduce to
Americans in the 1980s?
A) Video cassette recorders
B) Walkmans
C) Personal computers
D) Compact cars
E) Rap music
9. What events precipitated the 1979 seizure of over fifty American hostages in Iran?
A) The CIA helped return the Shah Reza Pahlavi to power.
B) Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rose to power in Iran, and the United States
allowed the shah to enter the United States for cancer treatment.
C) An American helicopter and a transport plane collided over the Iranian desert.
D) The Soviet Union invaded Iran.
E) The United States invaded Iran.
10. Which of the following statements about Ronald Reagan is not true?
A) He had been a paid spokesman for a major American corporation.
B) He had been a sports announcer in Des Moines.
C) He had been an enthusiastic conservative Republican since the 1930s.
D) As governor of California, he popularized conservative ideas.
E) He gained political experience as president of the Screen Writers' Guild.
11. What happened in the 1980 presidential election?
A) Reagan won by a razor-thin margin, but the Republicans lost seats in both the
House and the Senate.
B) Carter lost, but he held traditional New Deal Democratic voters such as bluecollar workers and white southerners.
C) Reagan won in a landslide by capturing all western and northeastern states,
although the solid South remained firmly Democratic.
D) Reagan won about 51 percent of the popular vote, and Republicans gained control
of the Senate for the first time since 1955.
E) Carter won by a slim margin over Gerald Ford, but the Democrats regained
control of the Senate and House of Representatives.
12. Reagan and his advisers believed, in an economic approach called Reaganomics, that if
they
A) increased revenue from taxes, the country could spend more for defense
programs.
B) cut taxes, the country's economy would expand and produce more revenue for the
federal government.
C) reduced defense programs, the country could spend more money on domestic
programs.
D) eliminated the income tax and adopted a national sales tax, the country could
afford to spend more money on both domestic and defense programs.
E) raised the income tax and increased corporate taxes, the country could expand its
domestic and defense programs.
13. What did President Ronald Reagan's economic policies produce during his first term?
A) A budget surplus
B) A decline in foreign trade
C) The lowering of tax receipts
D) All of these
E) None of these
14. To what was Ronald Reagan referring when he spoke of “the focus of evil in the
modern world”?
A) The Soviet Union
B) The growing federal bureaucracy
C) The New Deal electoral coalition
D) The People's Republic of China
E) The alliance among Iraq, North Korea, and Libya
15. Who were the contras?
A) They were a group formed by members of the Palestine Liberation Organization
to overthrow the Israeli government.
B) They were a group financed by the CIA to undermine the Sandinista government
in Nicaragua.
C) According to President Reagan, they were all American hostages around the
world.
D) They were bands of evangelical Christians who traveled the country inveighing
against sexual permissiveness and secular humanism.
E) They were the members of the underground movement in the Soviet Union that
was working to bring democracy, capitalism, and Christianity to that communist
land.
16. Why were the Camp David accords so significant?
A) They settled disputes between the former Union and Confederate states over
debts.
B) They officially ended American participation in the Vietnam War.
C) They set the foundation for peace negotiations between Israel and the Arab states.
D) They limited the number of nuclear missiles that the United States and the Soviet
Union could possess.
E) They led to formal diplomatic relations between the United States and China.
17. Which of the following statements about the Strategic Defense Initiative is true?
A) It was proposed by the growing peace and antinuclear movement as an alternative
to tactical nuclear weapons.
B) It seemed to be the best solution to the nuclear-arms race because of its modest
cost and technological simplicity.
C) It was the first program eliminated in the great wave of Reagan defense cuts.
D) It substituted cheap chemical and biological weapons for expensive nuclear
devices.
E) It proposed a system of space-based lasers and other high-tech defenses against
nuclear missiles.
18. Which of the following was not an accomplishment from President Reagan's first term?
A) Reducing the federal deficit
B) Reducing inflation
C) Revitalizing the American free-enterprise system
D) Rebuilding the military
E) Maintaining personal popularity
19. In the Iran-contra scandal, which of the following government branches broke a law by
selling weapons to Iran and giving aid to the contras?
A) The executive branch
B) The legislative branch
C) The judicial branch
D) None of these
E) All of these.
20. How did Jerry Falwell influence American politics in the 1980s?
A) He created NOW and campaigned for women's rights.
B) He served as the official chaplain for President Ronald Reagan.
C) He used his ministry to expose the sins of Democratic Party members.
D) He established the Moral Majority to fight the growing secularization of society.
E) He campaigned for Democratic candidates who claimed to be evangelical
Christians.
21. Why was Ronald Reagan's nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court
so important?
A) She turned the Court in a more liberal direction.
B) Her appointment gave women a majority on the Supreme Court for the first time.
C) She insured that Roe v. Wade would not be overturned.
D) She was the first woman ever confirmed to the Supreme Court.
E) Her failure to win confirmation showed how the Senate was still dominated by
white men.
22. Which form of music flourished in the mid- to late 1970s but then began to die out in
the 1980s?
A) Rap
B) Swing
C) Country
D) Disco
E) Beach
23. Beginning in the 1970s, what was the policy of the federal government toward Native
Americans?
A) It terminated all Indian-aid programs and relocated Indians to cities so that they
would disappear as a distinct ethnic group.
B) It continued its traditional paternalism.
C) It granted greater autonomy for Native Americans in managing their affairs––such
as schools and federal-aid programs.
D) It relocated Indian tribes from valuable land in the Sun Belt to undeveloped tracts
in Alaska.
E) It used federal troops to ensure the integration of Indian schools.
24. Which of the following statements would most likely have been supported by Phyllis
Schafly?
A) Abortion is morally wrong.
B) The Equal Rights Amendment would ensure women's rights.
C) The expansion of gay rights would benefit all Americans.
D) Reducing military spending would allow the expansion of domestic programs.
E) Women should enjoy the benefits of the sexual revolution.
25. What happened at Three Mile Island?
A) The United States established a prison to hold terrorists.
B) A nuclear plant experienced a near-disastrous accident.
C) Pennsylvania built the first town to be powered solely by a nuclear reactor.
D) National Guard forces intervened in a coal-mining strike.
E) The army tested the first components of the Strategic Defense Initiative.
26. Which of the following statements correctly describes sexual attitudes and/or behaviors
in the1980s?
A) The number of unmarried couples living together declined.
B) Concerns about AIDS and other issues led many Americans to take a more
cautious approach to sexual behavior.
C) Close to 30 percent of Americans admitted to going to gay bathhouses.
D) The slogan “Make Love, Not War” became very popular.
E) Teenage sexual activity declined.
27. What was the role of religion in post-1970 America?
A) It became increasingly irrelevant as the Me Generation turned inward and
concentrated on personal goals and materialistic pursuits.
B) It gained new visibility as a champion of liberal reform.
C) It gained increased visibility and played a more decisive cultural and political role
than it had for years.
D) It became discredited because of a series of scandals involving Billy Graham.
E) It witnessed the resurgence of Catholicism at the expense of Protestant
denominations.
28. What did the Supreme Court decide in Bakke v. United States?
A) It ruled that school districts must bus students if necessary to achieve integration.
B) It ruled that integration was complete when the percentage of black students in
schools equaled their percentage in the overall population.
C) It ruled that school districts that did not meet integration criteria could be forced
to do so by the federal government.
D) It overturned the quota system established by a California medical school that
tried to increase minority enrollment.
E) It ruled that affirmative action could be used in private hiring but not in
government hiring.
29. What did the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act do?
A) It required the deportation of all undocumented immigrants.
B) Ir ordered companies that hired undocumented immigrants to be fined $100,000.
C) It offered legal status to undocumented immigrants who had lived in the United
States more than five years.
D) It provided funding for increased border patrols.
E) It opened the country to unlimited immigration.
30. Which of the following correctly accounts for the fate of the SALT II agreement?
A) It was approved by the Senate after President Carter personally traveled to Vienna
to demonstrate United States support for arms control.
B) President Carter withdrew it from the Senate after the Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan.
C) Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev refused to sign it as a protest against a series of
anti-Soviet measures that President Carter adopted.
D) It was passed by the Senate and signed by President Carter, but President Reagan
repealed it because it gave too much to the Evil Empire.
E) It became the cornerstone for future U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations.
31. Who would have most likely opposed the Alaska Land Act?
A) Jimmy Carter
B) Oil companies
C) Greenpeace
D) Sierra Club
E) Teddy Kennedy
32. How well did the United States do in the 1980 Summer Olympics?
A) It won more medals than any other country.
B) It had its worst performance in modern Olympic history.
C) It did not participate.
D) It set fifteen world records and won twenty-five gold metals.
E) Its hockey team won the gold medal in a surprise victory.
33. Most of the immigrants to the United States since 1960 came from
A) Africa and the Middle East.
B) Asia and nations of the Western Hemisphere.
C) southern Europe.
D) the Soviet Union.
E) island nations in the Caribbean and Pacific.
34. By 1990, about how many Americans had died of AIDS?
A) About 31,000
B) Nearly 1,200,000
C) Slightly more than 3,000
D) No more than 175
E) There are no accurate estimates because the surgeon general refused to release the
figures.
35. Which of the following was not part of Reagan's Middle East policy?
A) He stationed two thousand American marines in Lebanon as part of a
multinational peacekeeping force.
B) He gave extensive aid to Egypt.
C) He supported Iran in its bloody war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
D) He attempted to jump-start Arab-Israeli peace talks along the lines envisioned by
the Camp David accords.
E) He provided military and economic aid to Israel.
36. Which of the following statements about women in the 1980s is correct?
A) The majority held paying jobs outside the home.
B) They were close to achieving equality of pay with men.
C) Almost half of the lawyers, doctors, and engineers in this country were women.
D) They were likely to marry at a younger age and have more children than women
in the 1950s.
E) None of these.
37. What did the Iran-contra scandal highlight to many Americans?
A) It indicated a pattern of corruption in Pentagon procurement.
B) It revealed President Reagan's passive, casual managerial style and the fact that he
often did not know what was going on.
C) It showed that many of the president's closest associates and advisers had caused
the president's problems.
D) It proved that Vice President Bush had strongly supported selling arms to Egypt
and using the profits to support the opponents of Ferdinand Marcos.
E) It established the fact that the American government would remain corrupt until
the country implemented term limits.
38. What seems to account for the vast popularity that Ronald Reagan maintained during his
eight years as president?
A) He was a skilled administrator and manager.
B) He possessed an exhaustive familiarity with the issues.
C) He had an ability to articulate the beliefs, aspirations, and fears of millions of
Americans.
D) He capitalized on the popularity of his vice president.
E) He consistently fought corruption.
39. Why was the 1987 INF Treaty a major milestone in nuclear-arms control?
A) It resulted in a 45 percent reduction of the world's nuclear arsenal.
B) It eliminated an entire class of existing nuclear weapons.
C) It provided for on-site inspection to verify compliance.
D) All of these.
E) None of these.
40. Although Ronald Reagan had been a vigorous Cold Warrior throughout his political
career, why was he able to bring about a remarkable easing of Cold War tensions?
A) He developed a personal rapport with Leonid Brezhnev.
B) He offered SDI to the Soviet Union.
C) He allowed Casper Weinberger to lead negotiations.
D) He channeled money through the CIA to more moderate members of the Soviet
Politburo.
E) He was willing to negotiate with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.